The Guatemala Genocide
WHERE AND WHEN:
As in the rest of Latin America, the prevailing economic-social model in Guatemala after independence from Spain
in 1821, saw a white, rich and privileged minority dominating the native or mixed-blood majority who were
forced into poverty and deprived of their basic rights. In 1954 a military coup put an end to an attempt at
agrarian reform that risked jeopardizing the traditional balance of economic and social power.
This was followed by years of popular democratic and guerrilla protests.
Between 1960 and 1996 the country was ravaged by a civil war that set the interests of the privileged
urban classes of colonial descent against those of the rural poor and the ethnic Maya communities living in the countryside.
The violence reached its peak between 1978 and 1983. Between those infamous
years the army wiped out entire Maya communities in the remotest and poorest villages
of the central-west of the country. Most of the victims belonged to the Mayas from the Ixil/Ixcàn region,
in the department of Quiché, where 90% of the massacres took place. The names of Gautemala's 'killing
fields' are: Barillas and Nentón (in the Huehuetenango department), Plan de Sánchez (Baja Verapaz),
San Francisco Javier, Vibitz and Chicamán (Quiché department).
In 1994, under international pressure and with the patronage of the UN, the warring
factions met in Oslo to agree upon a cessation of hostilities. The occasion gave rise to a
"Commission for Historical Clarification" (CEH), with a mandate to reconstruct the course of
events during those years and to promote reconciliation on the basis of historical truth.
After a five-year investigation, conducted with the cooperation of witnesses and with the
financial support of leading international institutions, the CEH established that the massacres
only marginally involved military objectives and in the great majority of cases were,
on the contrary, identified as crimes against humanity, and specifically against the Maya population.
SCALE OF THE KILLINGS:
The CEH established that government forces had committed 626 massacres of defenceless civilians.
The overall number of the victims is of approximately 200,000, 132,000 of which only in the course of the
"scorched earth" operation under the governments of Lucas Garcia and Efrain Rios Montt, between the late
Seventies and early Eighties. In addition to the dead, the war left a million and a half people homeless,
forced 150,000 refugees to flee to Mexico and some 50,000 desaparecidos – people who simply disappeared.
The CEH report places responsibility for 93% of the crimes firmly on the State, 3% on
the guerrilla fighters and the remaining 4% on other factions.
THE PERPETRATORS:
Politically speaking, the CEH ascertained that direct responsibility for the massacres lay
primarily with the two heads of state who came to power between 1978 and 1983: Romeo
Lucas Garcìa and Efrain Rios Montt. The material execution of the massacres was
conducted under the supervision of general Hector Gramajo, who coordinated the
military commanders in charge of operations in the western area (Alta and Baja
Verapaces, El Quiché, Huehuetenango and Chimaltenango).
A particularly brutal aspect of these massacres was the way in which political and military
leaders deliberately planned to involve civilians among the perpetrators. In the early
Eighties, as part of a military strategy – known as Plan Victoria – a paramilitary force of
"Civil Defence Patrols" (or PACs) was set up to support the army in their repressive
campaigns. Numerous civilians were recruited, and frequently press-ganged into these
PAC patrols. Rios Montt perfected and intensified the use of such patrols. The purpose
was to provide the army with a brute force of men who would do their "dirty work" for
them, with the dual result of making repression more effective and diverting any charges
of war crimes onto non-military personnel.
Although the PACs did commit countless atrocities, research conducted by Yale
University has demonstrated that, for every hundred massacres committed in the early
‘80s, eighty-seven can be attributed to regular soldiers acting according to a precise plan.
PLANNING:
The report compiled by the CEH talks of State strategy aimed at eliminating the guerilla
forces and their supporters – by means of a "scorched earth" policy – wherever they
may have taken hold. There is proof of documents on the military campaigns known as
"CAMPAÑA VICTORIA 1982", "OPERATIVO SOFÍA" DATED 15
JULY '82, "OPERACIÓN IXIL, CIVILIAN AFFAIRS" AND "PLAN FIRMEZA
1983". The purpose was to slaughter individuals or groups of defenceless civilians in
order to create terror as an instrument of social control.
In an interview General Hector Gramajo – Rios Montt's deputy chief of staff – "proudly"
stated that "one of the first things we did was to draw up a plan for the campaign with
attachments and appendices. It was a complete job planned in the minutest detail."
Less than one month after Rios Montt's coup d'ètat, in April 1982, Plan Victoria
was signed by the Junta and officially implemented ten days later.
The documents mentioned are covered by ‘state secrecy' and all attempts by human
rights organizations to force the government to make their contents public have been to
no avail. They are classified as top secret and are thus inaccessible for 30 years or even
longer if renewed.
IDEOLOGICAL REASONS:
In the climate of bitter ideological dispute that came with the cold war, the target of shoring
up society against the widespread threat of communism was set above all other
humanitarian considerations. The privileged classes were terrified by the idea that the
demand for social reform would lead to an attack of their rights of ownership. This was
the rationale behind the "national security doctrine", which legitimized the State's
indiscriminate violence against whoever demanded greater social justice. This doctrine
enabled the State to classify anyone who sided against it as "objectively communist" and
therefore liable to annihilation. Any form of opposition was seen as fertile breeding ground
for the "enemy within". Even the commitment of numerous priests to defending the rights
of the weakest was considered subversive. The military campaigns that led to the
extermination of the Maya communities in rural areas were undertaken in the name of the
above-mentioned "doctrine".
METHODS OF EXECUTION:
Frequent cases were reported of soldiers hunting for guerillas in villages previously
identified as dens of subversion, who, not having found any male adults, turned their
violence onto the defenceless villagers. There are witness accounts of the "execution" of
women, children and old people, carried out during military campaigns conducted
indiscriminately against entire villages. The methods of these assassinations ranged from
disembowling to decapitation and burying live victims in mass graves. Before being
murdered, the women were almost always raped, often in front of their children. After
which, everything and anything left was burnt to the ground. The "scorched earth
operations" against the Maya included the complete destruction of their communities,
homes, resources, means of subsistence, use of their cultural symbols, social, economic
and political institutions, values and cultural and religious practices.
Mass slaughter then went hand in hand with the elimination of individual opponents by
means of kidnapping and torture, which inevitably led to death. The latter method was
reserved for trade union leaders, students, democratic journalists and intellectuals in
general.
